Original subtitles

Tonight on Secrets Declassified, we reveal the global manhunts that cornered

the world's most wanted.

From the 17-year chase for the Unabomber. It's one of the biggest

manhunts in the history of the FBI.

To the Eastern European warlord hiding in plain sight.

He ends up becoming the face of a U.S.-based vitamin company and even

writes for a well-being magazine.

And the covert hunt for the world's greatest revolutionary.

In a moment, Che Guevara was smoking cigars in Cuba. The next, he vanished.

These are some of the secret pursuits carried out in the shadows by

governments and the people who work for them.

It's time to bring them to light.

The best way to catch your prey is to set a trap.

That's what the USDA does to catch one of the underworld's biggest arms

traffickers. To lay the bait, they don't turn to a spy, but a retired Bush pilot.

In the early 2000s, U.S. intelligence analysts start to notice a very worrying

trend.

Insurgent groups and militias around the world suddenly have way more advanced

weapons.

For the U.S., this is a massive...

problem because a lot of these groups are openly hostile to western interests

u.s intelligence services want to find out where the weapons are coming from

and cut the flow off at the source it's revealed that many of these weapons are

soviet issue illegal traffickers are funneling stockpiles of ex-soviet arms

into rebel hands making big money by tracking shipment and speaking to

informants it becomes clear that the king of these traffickers is one man,

Victor Boot, better known by his nickname, the Merchant of Death.

Boot is a former Soviet military officer. He's running a fleet of about

60 aircraft, and he's selling everything from assault rifles to helicopter

gunships. In 2002, Interpol releases a red notice for Boot, and he becomes

a wanted man.

Problem is, he's got friends in very high places.

Boot rarely leaves Russia, where he's widely believed to be protected by

Moscow. When he does travel, he only goes to other rogue regimes that won't

extradite him.

In 2007, the DEA decides enough is enough.

Top the ante, they'll lure Boot into a trap.

The DEA comes up with a plan.

They're going to pose as buyers, offering him a multi-million dollar

weapons deal. But to steal it, they're going to insist that he has to leave

Russia. That way, they can grab him.

They name their plan Operation Relentless.

For it to work at all, they need just the right front man to place the bait.

This person needs to be of Boots World, but also someone the DEA trusts.

There's only one guy who ticks both boxes, Mike Snow, a British pilot

working out of South Africa.

Mike Snow is a former commando who has spent over a decade flying bush planes

across Africa. He's no gunrunner. But Snow has spent years touching down on

the same runways that Boot flies into.

He has met many of Boot's cohorts, so they know him, they know of him, and

they trust him.

The DEA reaches out to Snow and asks him to help.

Snow is initially reluctant, but he's seen what Boot's weapons can do, the way

that they destroy communities and the way that they shatter lives.

And he wants to do something to prevent that from happening in the future.

Eventually, he agrees, and the U.S. pays him $25,000 for his help.

In November 2007, Snow reaches out to Boot to dangle the bait.

Snow tells Boot's people this concocted backstory, that he recently flew a

representative of a Colombian guerrilla group, and they're looking for a serious

arms supplier.

Given Snow's straight-laced reputation, this feels a little out of the blue.

Boot actually makes jokes that Snow's U.S. phone number must be a direct line

to the CIA.

But Boot looks into the guy, doesn't see anything that gives him suspicion, and

listen. The size of this deal is just a little too tempting for Boot to give up.

Snow's got Boot on the hook.

Now the DEA needs to reel him in.

Snow puts Boot into contact with two supposed Colombian rebel commanders, but

they're really just undercover DEA agents.

The agents with Snow tell Boot they need to meet him face-to-face at a location

that they all feel is secure.

They suggest Romania, Ghana, Morocco, Montenegro, but they can't seem to find

anywhere that Boot feels safe.

Then, as a last ditch, the agents suggest Thailand.

It doesn't have an extradition treaty with the U.S., but the DEA believes that

Thai authorities will agree to the deal.

Boot recognizes that Thailand is convenient, it's easy for him to get

there, and he is operating under the misapprehension.

that the United States can't get to him in Thailand.

Boot gets on a plane.

The trap is ready to be sprung.

But the DEA doesn't just need their target in Thailand.

To extradite him, they also need Boot to acknowledge he knows the weapons he's

selling will be used on U.S. citizens.

In a private conference room at the Sofitel Hotel, Boot meets the two

undercover agents. Now, they have bugged this entire room with hidden

microphones. When the meeting begins, one of the undercover agents asks for

dozens of Igla launchers. Then the agent drops the line that could blow the whole

thing apart.

These missiles are to shoot down American pilots.

Everyone's hanging on his next words.

Finally, he nods and says, We have the same enemy.

Just like that, boom, it's the clincher.

Proof, Boot is conspiring to kill U.S. citizens.

Doors burst open, agents rush in. After a global hunt spanning nearly a decade,

the merchant of death is caught.

In 2011, Boot is convicted of conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals and provide

material support to a terrorist organization.

He's sentenced to 25 years.

Meanwhile, Mike Snow vanishes, taking his heroic story with him.

Mike and his family flee Africa for a witness protection program.

And for years, his story remains hidden.

Then in 2014, journalist Nicholas Schmidl sits down repeatedly with Victor

Boot and publishes a detailed expose.

In it, he lays bare the incredible tale of Operation Relentless and how one bush

pilot helped bring down the world's biggest arms dealer.

Victor Boot sheltered out of reach.

Other fugitives hide in plain sight.

For three years, locals in one Eastern European dive bar drink alongside a

mystic healer called Dr. Dragan Davich.

What they don't know is he's really the most wanted warlord on the planet.

In the mid-90s, the newly formed nation of Bosnia and Herzegovina is being torn

apart by civil war. The two biggest ethnic groups, mostly Muslim Bosniaks

and mostly Christian Bosnian Serbs, are in a bitter fight for power.

Leading the Bosnian Serb forces is one of modern history's most brutal leaders,

Radovan Karadzic.

Radovan Karadzic is a former psychiatrist who is now the political

and military leader of the Bosnian Serbs, and he is truly an extreme

nationalist. During the war, he carries out a horrific genocide. He has Bosniak

cities surrounded and starved, and carries out dozens of brutal mass

killings.

When the war ends in 1995, the world cries out for justice.

Karadzic is indicted for genocide by the UN.

But at first, nothing happens at all.

For the first few months after the end of the conflict, Karadzic is living

openly. But as time passes, he can sense a change.

Karadzic feels that local support is waning and that his arrest may be

imminent.

Sometime in 1997, Radovan Karadzic disappears.

To find him, NATO peacekeeping troops begin a huge manhunt, working closely

with U.S. intelligence forces.

American analysts comb tiny settlements along the border between Bosnia and

Serbia. They're looking for things like late-night Internet logins in villages

that don't normally have power or even subscriptions to newspapers.

As pressure to enforce the UN indictment grows, so does the size of the manhunt.

Soon, it's deploying teams of CIA officers, Delta Force, and even SEAL

Team 6.

For eight years, every lead comes up empty.

But as investigators comb Eastern Europe, they miss one crucial

development. The sudden appearance of a mystical healer in the neighboring

country of Serbia.

In 2005, Dr. Dragan Dabic appears in the capital of Serbia, Belgrade, and he

practices acupuncture and old traditional remedies. He's gentle. Kids

on the street call him Santa Claus.

But this mystical healer is no saint.

In fact, he's the world's most wanted warlord, Radovan Karajic.

Weirdly, the disguise kind of adds up.

Karajic studied medicine when he was young, so he knows exactly how to be

convincing as a healer.

You'd think he'd keep his head down, but that's not his style.

Pretty soon he's built up enough of a profile that he ends up becoming the

face of a U.S.-based vitamin company and even writes a weekly column for a well

-being magazine.

Then he gets even bolder.

He starts going to a local bar that's a haunt of Serbian nationalists, and at

one point the disguised Karadzic grabs a fiddle and plays a heroic Serbian ballad

beneath a picture of himself.

By now, Karadzic believes he's truly untouchable.

Then someone in his inner circle makes a mistake.

Eleven years after he first disappears, Karadzic gets a phone call from his

brother. But his brother uses an old SIM card that investigators are still

tracking. Officers start looking into the man who picked up the phone.

But soon they figure out he's not who he says he is at all.

This time, Karajic has got nowhere to run.

In July 2008, on a crowded city bus, one of history's worst war criminals is

finally cornered. He takes his seat on the bus, and two plainclothes agents

take seats behind him. At that point, he knows that he's been caught.

In 2016, Karajic is found guilty of genocide and war crimes and sentenced to

40 years in prison.

That year, British war reporter Julian Borger uncovers the full story of how

this historic moment happened.

Borger publishes an extraordinary tell-all account built from dozens of

interviews with spies and officials.

These interviews reveal the details of how intense this chase had been and just

how close carriages came to disappearing forever.

Some manhunts cross continents. This one?

Never leaves the building.

When the CIA suspects a mole at Langley, they send in an operative to root him

out, triggering one of the most unique spy versus spy hunts in the agency's

history.

In 1995, a Russian source drops a bombshell that blindsides the CIA.

They have a mole.

This source claims the Russians know details of secret U.S. operations that

could only have been leaked by an insider.

This warning sends shockwaves through Washington.

The FBI handles counterintelligence inside the U.S., so it falls to them to

work with the CIA to figure out who this mole might be.

They begin an urgent hunt inside the agency.

The FBI narrows the search to just a handful of officers who have access to

the information that the Russians claim to have. And as that list narrows

further and further, one name stands out.

James Nicholson.

The FBI decides to check him out.

Nicholson is polygraphed several times as part of these routine security

checks. The polygraph examiner actually sees that Nicholson is not only showing

signs of deception, he's actually showing signs of trying to cheat the

test.

They let him think that he's passed, and he leaves none the wiser.

But he's just become their prime target. And catching an agent this experienced

comes with high stakes.

Nicholson is a 45-year-old intelligence officer. He's trained in catching spies,

which makes him a formidable opponent in and of itself.

But the bigger worry is his current job. His current posting is as an instructor

in the CIA's training academy.

This is a big problem because every future and upcoming covert officer is

going through the same training regiments that Nicholson is leading. He

could potentially compromise an entire generation of intelligence officers

before they've even left the training facility.

After the FBI starts surveillance on Nicholson, they spot a chance to slip an

undercover agent right under his nose.

A short while into the investigation, Nicholson needs a deputy.

He's given a stack of personnel files to choose from, and one stands out, John

McGuire. To Nicholson, he looks like the perfect sidekick. He's a field officer

who's recently been sidelined and stuck in an administrative post.

What Nicholson doesn't know is John McGuire's placement is no accident.

The FBI has put McGuire directly in his path with orders to spy on him.

What happens next is the only spy versus spy mission to ever play out inside the

CIA.

McGuire becomes Nicholson's indispensable right-hand man, and

gradually he wins his trust.

Piece by piece, he starts feeding evidence back to the FBI.

First, forensics.

After a meeting, McGuire slips Nicholson's coffee cup into his bag

because the DNA on it gives investigators a way to tie him to any

stolen documents.

Then, a house sweep.

With McGuire's help, using a duplicate key, a covert team breaks into

Nicholson's house while Nicholson is away.

And inside, they hit the jackpot. They find a scanner and a laptop computer

chock full of clandestine CIA documents supplied by Nicholson.

Finally, the surveillance.

The investigative team is able to put hidden cameras inside of Nicholson's

office. They record him taking pictures of classified CIA files.

It's a damning stack of evidence.

But to make their case bulletproof, the FBI wants to catch Nicholson red-handed,

heading to his handler with classified documents in his possession.

After several months of investigation, McGuire alerts the FBI to the fact that

Nicholson is arranging a secret meeting in Switzerland.

This is the perfect moment.

Once Nicholson goes through airport security, he'll be unarmed, but he'll

also likely be carrying the sensitive material.

On the day of the flight, agents follow Nicholson through the airport.

A team posing as passengers surround him, then out on the tarmac, they take

him down.

The bag he is carrying is full of stolen intelligence found for Moscow.

Nicholson is sentenced to 23 years, the highest ranking CIA officer ever to be

convicted of espionage.

James Nicholson is a true American traitor.

He sold out his own colleagues and U.S. secret operations to the Russians for a

sum total of $300,000.

McGuire's undercover role in Nicholson's capture stays hidden for years.

But in 2011, one reporter uncovers the full story.

A journalist named Brian Denson manages to befriend Nicholson's family and gains

access to reams of private correspondence, along with Nicholson's

own. Prison Journal.

These documents reveal in detail the incredible story of how the CIA quietly

planted one of its own to track a traitor inside Langley.

How do you track down a terrorist no one has seen in 17 years?

That's the challenge the CIA faces in 1994 as it hunts a man who spread a wave

of violence across Europe in the 1970s and 80s.

In Vienna in 1975, the biggest names in the global oil industry are gathered in

a single room for their annual OPEC summit.

Around midday, six armed militants burst inside. They kill three and capture over

60 hostages.

They force Austrian TV to broadcast their demands every two hours, and their

message is on behalf of liberation for Palestine.

Incredibly, they escape.

by demanding a jet bound for Algeria.

The world's press go wild over the audacity of the attack.

Who could pull off a strike like this and get away with it? The militants

claim they belong to a group called Arm the Arab Revolution.

Investigators recognize one of the men from the photos and footage as a known

militant, the wanted terrorist already nicknamed Carlos the Jackal.

Carlos is the pseudonym for Ilich Ramirez Sanchez.

the son of a wealthy Venezuelan who has drifted into radical politics during his

world travels.

He's previously been linked to bombings and killings across Europe in the early

70s, but until now, he's flown largely under the radar.

Not anymore.

The OPEC attack catapults Carlos straight to the front pages.

Western intelligence services launch a renewed manhunt to bring him to justice.

Problem is, Carlos' fame has won him powerful new protection.

Soviet bloc states see Carlos as someone with a common enemy, the West.

They also see him as someone who can inflict chaos on this enemy with

terrorist attacks.

So, they begin to shelter him. He bounces from East Berlin to

Czechoslovakia, even down to Syria.

While in East Berlin, Carlos is given a support staff of 75 people.

It's almost like he has gone from below the radar to a state-supported

terrorist. For over 15 years, no Western authorities get so much as a shot at

him. In that time, Carlos unleashes wave after wave of terror on the West.

Bombing attacks and hit jobs that claim almost 80 lives.

Then, a revolution changes everything.

When the Soviet Union collapses, Many of the Soviet-friendly regimes that once

sheltered Carlos begin to ally with the United States. So overnight, his safe

havens start to disappear. It's not a good look to be protecting Carlos,

especially if you want to get into the Americans' good graces.

Eventually, the CIA are approached by an unlikely ally.

Bruno Breguet is a trusted lieutenant Carlos has relied on for years.

He reaches out to the Americans.

He feels Carlos' terror is no longer guided by his ideology, but by his ego.

The growing brutality inside Carlos' group has left him disillusioned.

Now, he offers to help the CIA hunt his former comrade.

The CIA gets Breguet to meet one of Carlos' couriers for lunch in Zurich.

Now, the courier is completely unaware that Breguet is working with the CIA.

Intelligence teams track the courier all the way to Khartoum, the capital of

Sudan.

The problem is Khartoum has about 2.5 million residents, and they need to find

one man.

Added to that, the few images they have of Carlos are 17 years out of date.

So to find Carlos, the CIA brings in Billy Waugh.

He's 64 and a veteran tracker.

Billy Waugh launches a huge surveillance sweep across the city.

Then, one day while he's eating pizza, he sees someone that he had seen beside

Carlos before, his former bodyguard.

Later, he trails the bodyguard's car to a walled property.

He sits, and he waits.

And then suddenly, a man he believed to be Carlos steps into view.

Wall gets the first confirmed pictures that the CIA has of Carlos in more than

a decade.

Now the CIA has his exact location, but they don't bring him in themselves.

Carlos's biggest crimes have occurred in Europe, and the French authorities have

the biggest stack of evidence against him.

So the CIA lets them step in.

In August 1994, Carlos goes into the hospital for minor surgery.

But the moment he begins to wake, a security guard steps in and sedates him

again.

He wakes up to a good news, bad news situation.

The good news is that the surgery went swimmingly. The bad news, he's actually

on a French military aircraft on his way to Paris where he's going to be charged

for his crimes.

On August 14, 1994, after two decades on the run, the world's most wanted

terrorist is in custody.

He's found guilty of a string of murders and bombings. He's sentenced to life in

prison three times over.

The story doesn't end there.

In the 1990s, former Soviet states declassify records from their secret

police. They shed new light on why so many nations were willing to shelter

Carlos.

Page after page of files reveal Eastern Bloc states were terrified of the

reprisals Carlos might launch against their nations if they refused to shelter

him. It wasn't a shared ideology that led them to cooperate with Carlos.

It was fear.

Very few people terrified communist intelligence services like Batasi, but

in his prime, Carlos was one of those people.

The best spies don't just disappear, they start over. Like this next pair,

two KGB agents who give the FBI the slip in New York, only to resurface 3,000

miles away as an entirely new couple.

Exactly how they were caught was kept secret for more than 50 years.

At a political rally, Lona Petka and American-born communist activists meet

Morris Cohen from Harlem. They hit it off, and by July 1941, they're married.

It's only after they're married that Morris reveals to Lona that he is not

just a fellow believer. He has actually been working as a spy for the Soviet

Union since 1937.

For most people, Finding out your partner is part of a spy network would

be a marriage ender.

But not Lona.

She agrees to give Morris her silence.

And soon, he asks for even more.

When America enters the war, Morris is called up to serve in the U.S. Army.

But before he leaves, he asks Lona to take over stealing intelligence from

military factories all along the East Coast.

Lona readily agrees. After all, she believes in the cause, and it turns out

she's pretty good.

During this time, she meets a scientist who is working in the Manhattan Project,

and he provides her with blueprints for the U.S. atomic program, which are

immediately shared with the Russian government.

After the war, Lona and Morris return to New York and live under the radar, until

a sensational arrest in 1950 sets the authorities onto their trail.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, two American-born Soviet spies, are

convicted of passing atomic secrets about the Manhattan Project.

They're electrocuted at New York's Sing Sing prison.

This unnerves the Coens. They knew the Rosenbergs.

And there's proof now that if your name comes up in association with sharing

nuclear secrets with the Soviet Union, you could face the electric chair.

With help from the KGB.

The Coens flip out of the U.S. and into Poland.

As the FBI digs into the Rosenbergs' network, they discover links to the

Coens. The FBI goes to the Coens' house and interrogates neighbors, only to

learn that the couple is long gone.

There's nothing. It's as if this couple simply disappeared.

The only thing that the FBI can cough up is the enlistment record from Morris

entering the Army during the Second World War.

It gives them some fingerprints and it gives them a photograph.

The FBI sends word to all NATO embassies that Morris is a wanted man, but nothing

comes back.

The case goes cold until a year later when these two spies resurface 3,000

miles away, but not as Morris and Lona.

In 1954, the Coens arrive in a village just outside of London.

Now they are Peter and Helen Kroger.

Peter and Helen have established a bookshop where they're interested in

antique books.

This bookshop is the key to a new top-secret mission.

The KGB is running the spy ring targeting the HM Naval Base Portland,

which is building the UK's very first nuclear-armed submarine.

The Coens are passing information about the construction of that submarine on to

Moscow, and the method that they're using to do that is ingenious.

They shrink secret documents into micro dots, tiny photos the size of a period.

Then they replace real periods in the books with these micro dots.

Just imagine you're reading A Tale of Two Cities, and this period on page 57

is in fact a secret document.

That copy of the book then finds its way to the Soviets.

The Coens send off their antique books for six years.

Feeding Mother Russia with secrets.

Then the British get a new lead that puts the Coens back on the radar.

In 1960, MI5 gets a tip that a naval attaché working in London is spying on

behalf of the Soviet Union.

MI5 puts him under tight surveillance and realizes that he's handing over

documents to the home of Peter and Helen Kroger, the Coens.

Over nine months, MI5 pieces together the entire Soviet spy ring.

including the Coens.

Then, on January 7, 1961, they raid the Coens' home.

The second they walk in, it hits them. This isn't a normal home.

It's a spy nest.

They find passports, covert communication tools, and the equipment

to make and read microdots.

It's about as incriminating as it gets.

MI5 arrest Peter and Helen Kroger, but their true identities are only uncovered

After they take their prints.

MI5 can't match the fingerprints to anything in their database. However,

they then get a tip that perhaps the Kroger's are in fact Americans.

They share the fingerprints with the United States government, and they get a

match. The man that they're dealing with is actually Morris Cohen, and he is

wanted for spying.

After two decades in the field with two spy rings, the Coens are finally caught.

They're sentenced to 20 years for espionage, but freed after eight in a

prisoner swap.

Meanwhile, MI5's operation stays locked away until 2017.

Only then are files declassified, including the details of the microdots

found in Lona Cohen's handbag upon her arrest.

Those microdots reveal the extent to which this couple, this duo, functioned

as one of the most prolific spy teams during the Cold War.

Che Guevara is the Marxist revolutionary who helps reshape Cuba.

Then, in 1965, he suddenly vanishes.

The CIA races to find him before he can ignite his next revolution.

Che Guevara is an Argentinian revolutionary who is one of the

masterminds behind Castro's communist takeover of Cuba.

After their victory, Guevara travels through Latin America and Africa,

pushing communism.

But in 1965, he stops speaking at public events.

This man who at one point had been the darling of the Marxist world now can't

be found anywhere.

That's a problem because CIA see Che Guevara as someone with a truly unique

power to single-handedly ignite revolutions.

Che becomes a ghostly figure, haunting the CIA.

They chase his shadow in Africa and Southeast Asia.

Then a breakthrough in Bolivia refocuses their manhunt. In March of 1967,

the Bolivian military realizes that there is some sort of new resistance

group in the interior of their country.

They send some of their soldiers to check it out, and seven of them are

killed in an ambush.

Later... two of the insurgents come forward and surrender themselves to the

Bolivian army. The Bolivian army is very surprised when they learn that that

insurgent group is being led by Che Guevara.

The Bolivians alert the CIA that Che might be fomenting a new revolution in

the Bolivian jungle.

After so many false leads, the CIA isn't convinced.

So they decide to send a U.S. field operative to find out.

But that creates a different problem.

The Bolivian government doesn't want a U.S. operative running this hunt. It

would make them look weak. And the United States doesn't want it either. If

Che can point to CIA involvement, it becomes proof that he is fighting

American imperialism. So the U.S. and Bolivian authorities decide to put a CIA

operative on the ground, but undercover.

The CIA already has the perfect man in mind, 26-year-old Felix Rodriguez.

He's a Cuban exile who knows Guevara's playbook back to front.

Rodriguez is given a position in the Bolivian army, and he goes by the name

Captain Ramos.

His first task is to identify if the rebel leader really is Che.

Rodriguez gets a break in August.

Troops catch the guerrillas off guard at a river crossing and capture a prisoner,

and he gives the same answer.

Che is in charge.

That same month, another break.

When Bolivian troops raid a camp, they discover cigar butts, fake passports,

photos, and even fingerprints belonging to Che Guevara.

Rodriguez has confirmation.

The world's most iconic revolutionary is back, leading rebels in Bolivia.

Now his mission intensifies, from intelligence gathering to a hunt.

Rodriguez leaves his office in La Paz and goes out in the field with the

troops. They're hunting down the insurgent group in a remote jungle area

that's characterized by deep valleys.

On October 8th, Bolivian forces run into 17 rebels at a nearby stream, and a four

-hour gunfight erupts.

During that gun battle, one of them tries scrambling up a hillside only to

be shot through the calf.

Bolivian soldiers rushed to that individual, and only after flipping him

over did they realize that the man that's been shot is Che Guevara.

Che is moved to a nearby schoolhouse, and Felix Rodriguez, still undercover,

rushes to the site.

Six months after the search in Bolivia began, he's standing next to Che.

Rodriguez wants to take Che alive.

They want to interrogate him. This is the CIA's objective.

He also knows the Bolivians are ready to kill him. They don't want a public trial

or the protests that might spark.

Rodriguez urgently sends word to the CIA station chief, asking the U.S. Embassy

to pressure the Bolivians to keep Che alive.

It's too late.

On the morning of October 9th, 1967, Rodriguez himself takes a call.

The orders come direct from the Bolivian president.

Che is to be shot.

staged to look like he died in combat.

Rodriguez knows the best he can do now is get whatever intel that he can. So

Rodriguez sits with Che for an hour, talking through his life and everything

he's been doing since leaving Cuba.

And then Rodriguez informs Che of his fate.

Che Guevara turns white. Then he says, it's better this way. I should have died

in combat.

Two days later, images of Che's body appear on front pages worldwide.

His death cements his iconic status.

For more than 20 years, many challenged the official story that Che died in

battle. Then, in 1989, Rodriguez decides to share his truth with the world.

At the age of 48, Rodriguez publishes this memoir that narrates the final

chapter of the life of Che Guevara.

but also the extent to which the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was involved

in his pursuit and his death.

One of the longest manhunts in FBI history stretched for 17 years, 16

bombs, three deaths, and dozens of injuries.

And it was all sparked by a homemade explosive so simple it gave

investigators nothing to trace at all.

The spring of 1978, and a nondescript package has been delivered to

Northwestern University as a member of campus security investigates it. The

package explodes.

It turns out to be a crude bomb made from scrap metal and bits of wood.

Thankfully, it only causes minor injuries.

A year later.

Another blast rips through the cargo hold of an American Airlines flight.

Now, again, no one's killed, but investigators notice it's the same style

as the Northwestern University package, and maybe from the same maker.

The FBI opens a manhunt to find the sender and gives it the codename

Unabomber, short for University and Airline Bomber.

But they have very little to go on.

There are no traceable parts in these bombs.

Everything has been taken from junkyards, scrapyards, and they're put

together in a way that the FBI cannot trace.

Over the next five years, more bombs follow at university halls, computer

shops, and airline factories.

These bombs get more sophisticated until, after ten attacks, the spree

turns deadly.

In 1985, a computer store owner in California is killed when a device

rigged with shrapnel detonates. The press goes wild.

Soon, the Unabomber Task Force has over 150 people working the case, becoming

one of the biggest manhunts in the history of the FBI.

They go through every fragment of every device and conduct thousands of

interviews, but still, they come up empty.

Despite little evidence, the FBI builds a profile of the bomber.

They think he's probably white, male, solitary, maybe some academic

background, maybe an engineering background.

The FBI investigates more than 2,000 people, but still, they've got nothing.

Nine years after the first bomb, they get a break.

A man is spotted leaving a box in a Salt Lake City parking lot. And when a nearby

computer store owner goes to check it out, it detonates, severing all the

nerves in his arm.

The description of the man, though, helps the sketch artist produce the

first widely circulated drawing of the suspect.

It appears the bomber is spooked by this close call.

For six years, nothing.

Then suddenly, new and deadlier devices appear.

This time, though, the bomber isn't just sending bombs, but a message.

In 1995, the bomber sends a 35,000-word manifesto to the New York Times and the

Washington Post.

The manifesto itself is a diatribe against industry, against modern life,

and especially against technology.

He also makes this demand.

He says, if you don't publish this manifesto in your newspapers, I'll kill

again. The journalists agonize over the decision. Should they refuse to cave to

blackmail or protect the public?

But the FBI sees an opportunity.

The unique writing style, like the British spelling of analyze, give

investigators something to work with. It's filled with clues to who the

Unabomber might actually be.

The FBI winds up pressuring news outlets to publish the manifesto because they're

hoping that someone will recognize the terminology, the ideas, the concepts

that are contained within it. It worked better than they ever believed.

Thousands of people come forward with clues.

One of them is a teacher named David Kaczynski.

David's scared because the writing feels eerily like that of his brother, Ted.

Ted Kaczynski had a Midwestern upbringing, but he was always known to

be a genius. He was a Berkeley professor.

But one brother's hunch isn't enough.

The FBI needs something solid.

David hands over an old essay that Ted wrote back in 1971, and it is a heart

-stopper because you've got 23 pages that are just brimming with exactly the

same ideas and obsessions as they see in the manifesto. For the first time in U

.S. criminal history, linguistics are brought to bear in getting a major

search warrant.

After thousands of dead ends, the investigation finally has its first

promising suspect, Ted Kaczynski.

But the FBI doesn't rush in.

The FBI go to Ted's remote cabin in Montana, but they have to act carefully.

If the Uta bomber really is Ted, then he's highly intelligent, likely armed,

and may have the whole place rigged with explosives.

As the FBI is moving in on the cabin, the cabin door opens, and Kaczynski just

walks out onto the porch and surrenders himself into their custody.

Inside the cabin is a cache of undeniable evidence.

They find 40,000 pages of notes, they find bomb-making experiments, and even

one finished bomb ready to be mailed.

The longest and most expensive manhunt for a serial killer in U.S. history is

over.

Ultimately, Kaczynski pleads guilty to carrying out the attacks in 1998, and he

receives four life sentences without the possibility of parole.

For decades, the full details about the case remain classified, until 2012, when

the FBI releases a wave of new documents, including the very writings

and words Ted wrote that were used to convict him.

From double agents hiding inside the CIA to warlords lurking in plain sight, the

world's most dangerous players go to extreme lengths to stay one step ahead.

But no one hides forever.